New Year greetings from the Children's Department of Memorial Library!  Before starting on the topic of this column, in the year-end column found in this space, our Director, Jill Pannkuk, invited library patrons to give their input on what they would like to see the library offer. Please offer ideas on children's programming as well. You may come in person to the Children's Desk, or you may use the suggestion box located on the Circulation Desk at the front. We're working toward making 2008 a meaningful year for our young patrons, and your input will assist in reaching that goal.

With that in mind, a couple of month-long observances found in January go along with the goals of the Healthy Kids Challenge grant the library is working under at this time. Did you know January is Staying Healthy Month? One way a person might stay healthy is to observe Oatmeal Month, which is also in January.

Since breakfast is the most important meal of the day, a good place to start would be to insure your child eats a healthy breakfast. Oatmeal could easily comprise part of such a nutritious meal. Oatmeal comes in all sorts of tasty flavors these days, or a creative person could add a choice of things from your refrigerator or pantry to plain oatmeal and make a very appealing breakfast.

At www.familycrafts.about.com there are all sorts of fun ideas of things to do focusing on oatmeal and breakfast. One suggestion is to take a paper grocery bag and turn it into a chef's apron for your child to wear while helping prepare breakfast. This also gives you important together time with your child. Another 'crafty' suggestion is to help your child to make a table setting placemat to eat breakfast from. It suggests laminating it for durability.

If you are not aware, Liberal has a wonderful place to laminate projects such as this at a reasonable price. That place is the Family Resource Center located in Washington Elementary School . If you come in the front door of the school and turn quickly to your right, you will be at the entrance to the Center. They offer much more than laminating-die cut machines, construction paper, stickers, and a poster making machine, just to name a few. The hours are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and the first and third Saturday of each month from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Another fun suggestion on the family crafts website is to make oatmeal cookie mix to give as a gift. The site even includes a print out of the recipe and a graphic to attach to your gift jar. Some fun topping ideas for good old oatmeal are also given, as well as a link to the food pyramid so that you can check out how what you are eating for breakfast (and the rest of the day) measures up to your daily requirements.

This week, library staff will begin a five-session series with the children in the Latch Key program entitled Breakfast ala cart. Lessons will be taught each time covering such topics as safe food handling, food pyramid guidelines, and a number of creative ideas. Each session will also include some of the great suggested foods for their snack time. All of these materials are part of the Healthy Kids Challenge, which offers fun ways to reach children with the message of life-long healthy food choices and the importance of daily exercise.

The library offers some resources on this topic--some simple enough for young children to do with adult supervision. DK Publishing put out a yummy book called Kids' Fun and Healthy Cookbook. The photographs in this edition make a mouthwatering temptation out of each recipe featured. There is an entire section on breakfast, including tips for adding nutritional content and flavor to oatmeal. Each page contains a box telling ingredients and equipment needed, as well as snippets of information such as food facts and tasty twists.

Breakfast Blast by Bobbie Kalman is part of a series of books in the Healthy Lifestyles for Kids series which the library owns. Each recipe features step-by-step instructions with demonstration through photographs. Cooking terms are also explained and safe food handling is discussed.

Pillsbury's Kids Cookbook is in an easy-to-handle format with a spiral binding to lie nice and flat. The book begins with some tips including a pot holder symbol which alerts kids that an adult needs to be nearby during that part of the recipe. Cooking terms and techniques are explained and safety is discussed. Each recipe tells the calories, total fat, sodium, carbohydrates and protein, as well as the diabetic exchanges.

Kids Cook 1-2-3 by Rozanne Gold has a breakfast section. This book features all recipes each using only 3 ingredients. This book lacks the illustrations of the others but has easy-to-follow instructions.

Why not join a young person you know in celebrating both Staying Healthy Month and Oatmeal Month? Your help could very well guide that child to learn life choices to improve his or her health and well being. See you in the healthy New Year at Memorial Library!